17 May 2008

Bike Streets and Sky Trains


Photo: my bike, in all it's orange glory


The sun is out again, which is always cause for celebration in this part of the world, and considering the fact it's Friday, I decided to ride my bike to work. This in itself is not blog worthy--I've ridden my bike to work for many jobs, in many countries (except Ireland because that way lies madness). This difference is two-fold: bike streets and sky trains.

Cycle lanes on a road I've seen, but Vancouver is the first city where I've experienced streets marked as cycle streets (expect photo documentation soon). There are even maps available that show all the bike streets from a bird's eye view. Ami is using such a map as I type to navigate to her office on 7 millionth street. I, however, work in Burnaby, a suburb so far away it might as well be a different city. Biking all the way from our apartment to my office would be like biking from downtown Wichita to Andover, or from Te Papa to Titahi Bay for the Kiwi contingent. Fortunately, Vancouver has something available to neither Wichita nor Wellington: a sky train.

::pause for OOOs and AAAs::

I won't delve into the local commentary on the relative benefits vs. the flaws of the service (no matter where you go in the world, someone is going to whine about something) because the sky train suits me nicely. I ride half the distance, jump on the train with my bike, and am whisked away: flying above the suburbs like Aladdin on his carpet, were Aladdin's carpet a 2-ton electric train with a maple leaf stuck to the side.

My bike is an old, standard cruiser that sat in a little Korean man's garage for 30 years. I'm quite confident that I'm the second person to ride it in its life. With its "safety" orange paint job, I'm like a giant road cone hooning down the street, which is good because people tend to stop for orange. I'll by flying downhill, blowing through intersections while cars screech to a halt. Even if they're not even on the same street, they'll slow down if they see me out of the corner of their eye.

"Why are you stopping, honey?" She'll ask.

"I saw something." He'll reply.

"Saw what?"

"Dunno, but it was orange."

2 comments:

Darrell said...

You're an inspiration to us all. One of these days, I just might ride my bike to work. Bike looks nice and servicable - even has fenders for those we days when you don't want a wet streak up your back.

Unknown said...

I used to cycle a lot in my younger years, but I was caught in a crash back in high school when a car tried to overtake me to turn into a street and I clipped it and flew into the middle of the road (the driver got his license suspended and I got a apology from him). After that, I never cycled again and the general perception of cyclists thesedays isn't that hot either for me to take up the pedals again (go watch the episode of Top Gear when they all race across London and Richard Hammond was cycling. Sure, he won, but it shows how everyone around him was being gits).

England is notorious for unhelmeted cyclists. In 2005, there was 16,000 casualties and 2,000 deaths. There has been many a time where I've seen chavs cycle down the road (often not in the designated cycle lane which means you have to overtake them) without head protection and not giving a care about the world around them.

Compared to NZ, who made head protection compulsary back in 1994 (I had to google that since I'm an old fart and I grew up with it). 14 years later and the law has decreased the amount of people who cycle and that it's only beneficial for kids up to 12 years. Even the advocacy groups say it's better to encourage than to enforce, but after seeing the sight of people here in the UK, I don't want the 'I'm invincible' mentality to follow through.

On another note, I need to get an email address for Karen. I miss talking to her. Could you be a lad and pass my blog URL onto her please? :)